Проблема институционального укрепления Конвенции о запрещении биологического и токсинного оружия

Many experts consider biological weapons as the most dangerous of all existing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), with the potential for producing more extensive and devastating effects on human populations than even fusion nuclear weapons. Biological weapons are defined as biological organisms, and substances derived directly from living organisms, that can be used to deliberately cause death or injury to humans, animals, or plants by targeting crops and livestock.
Unlike nuclear and chemical weapons, biological weapons are without odour or colour. Examples of diseases used in biological warfare include smallpox, cholera, plague, anthrax and avian influenza. Besides, these living organisms are highly infectious, substantially accessible, and relatively easy to deliver and use.
The first attempt at prohibiting biological weapons on the international level was the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of Poisonous Gases and Bacteriological Methods of Warfare of June 17, 1925 (Geneva Protocol), which was the precursor to the Biological Weapons Convention.
The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) is a legally binding treaty, Formally known as “The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction.”1 The Convention was opened for signature on April 10, 1972, and took effect on March 26, 1975, with the ratification of 22 states, including its three depositary governments: the Soviet Union (Russian Federation), the United Kingdom and the United States. The Convention is of unlimited duration.
The BWC is a cornerstone of the multilateral disarmament regime, also indispensable legal and political instrument that reinforces the widespread condemnation of biological weapons. It represents the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning an entire category of WMD. Currently, the BWC has reached 183 States Parties, with four signatory states and additional 10 states have neither signed nor ratified the agreement, which keeps it from being universal (as of August 2019). The Convention is comparatively short and comprises only 15 articles.
Yet, despite the sweeping nature of its prohibitions, the BWC faces fundamental issues
and challenges that threaten its relevance. The rapid development in science and technology,
especially in the biotechnology sphere, as well as some alleged violations by States Parties has carried concerns about the BWC’s effectiveness and lunched a major discussions about enhancing the institutional deficit of the Convention.
This research comes to answer the following question:
î What are the prospects for the institutional strengthening of the BWC?
This main research question is divided into three sub-chapters they are addressed respectively throughout the three chapters:
î Why Biological Weapons Convention need institutional strengthening?
î What measures have been adopted to strengthen the BWC regime?
î What measures should be adopted to further strengthen the BWC regime?
In matter of literature, there is a wealth of literature detailing the historical background of the convention, the membership, negotiations, and all the functions of the BWC. Starting of course by the official documents provided by the official website of the Convention, all the conferences, the meetings, the reports and documentations could be found there. Furthermore, many academic books and articles relevant to the background of the convention were published mainly the time of Review Conferences; among the famous authors we can find, the senior research fellow in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine at King’s College London Filippa Lentzos,2 Malcom Dando3 Jez Littlewood4 and others.
In additions, even more extensive literature on the challenges the BWC faces’, many publications were dedicated to the issue of verification (e.g. Allan S. Krass5, Malcolm R. Dando and Graham S. Pearson)6. Or implementation (e.g. Marie I. Chevrier and others),7 and many other publications where related to Science and Technology (e.g. John Hart, Ralf Trapp,8 Alexander Kelle and others)9 as well as literature on Confidence Building Measures (Filippa Lentzos10, Marie I. Chevrier and Iris Hunger11, Brian Rappert and Chandré Gould,12 and many other authors.
Through studying a large amount of publications, an important point should be mentioned is that most of publications uses the same sources and authors, therefore a significant number of publications are almost identical, whether in the plan of work or the conclusions reached.
Nonetheless, a much smaller academic literature were made on the specific topic of the problem on Institutional Strengthening. Accordingly, this research argues that the topic of institutional strengthening is the weakest link among the different challenges that faces the effective implementation of the Convention, and simultaneously the less addressed whether during the States Parties meetings or from the experts.
In the same context, Nicholas A. Sims, one of the specialised in international organisations and the diplomacy of disarmament, has suggested in many of his works13 different options for remedying this institutional deficit, and he believes that the ultimate answer for that starts with the long-term prospect of a permanent organisation called Organisation for the Prohibition of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons (OPBW), similar to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
8 John Hart, Ralf Trapp, Science and Technology and their Impacts on the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention A Synthesis Report on Preparing for the Seventh Review Conference and Future Challenges, SIPRI, (2011).
9 Alexander Kelle and others, A Paradigm Shift in the CBW Proliferation Problem: Devising Effective Restraint on the Evolving Biochemical Threat (Germany: Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung, 2008).
10 Filippa Lentzos, Strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention confidence-building measures: Toward a cycle of engagement, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol.67, Issue 3, (2011). / Filippa Lentzos, Reaching a tipping point: Strengthening the BWCÕs confidence-building measures. Disarmament Diplomacy (2009). Filippa Lentzos, Reaching A Tipping Point: Strengthening BWC Confidence-Building Measures, Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, .
11 Marie I. Chevrier and Iris Hunger, Confidence-Building Measures for the BTWC: Performance and Potential, The Nonproliferation (2000).
12 Brian Rappert and Chandré Gould, Biological Weapons Convention Confidence, the prohibition and learning from the past, Institute for Security studies, (2014).
13 Including The Diplomacy of Biological Disarmament (St Martin’s Press, 1988), The Evolution of Biological Disarmament (Oxford University Press for SIPRI, 2001), and his last book The Future of Biological Disarmament (Routledge, 2009) and many other articles.
14 Nicholas A. Sims, The Future of Biological Disarmament: Strengthening the Treaty Ban on Weapons (London: Routledge, 2009).
(OPCW).
Sims has started his analysis in his last book14 from
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the fact that the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention is the cornerstone of the whole disarmament regime. However, he insisted simultaneously that the convention possess serious weaknesses and deficits that needed strengthening. To explore that, the author threw a comparison with other multilateral treaties for arms control and disarmament, especially with the “nearest neighbour”, the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) –according to the author- and he came to the conclusion that a structural reinforcement to the “fragile treaty” regime is needed.
From her side, Jessica K. Schneider,15 agrees with Sims that the Convention is weak, since states have the ability to develop, produce, stockpile, and use dangerous biological agents for other than peaceful or phylactic purposes. Arguing that about 12 countries -in 2009-, including parties to the BWC are considered to have active biological warfare program, mentioning Iraq, Iran, Libya, China, Russia, North Korea, and others.16
Moreover, throughout her paper, Schneider refers to serious issues and challenges that faces the Convention, a significant part of it was devoted to address the issues related with the lack of enforcement verification mechanisms within the convention. The author argues that the central problem of the BWC regime is not about its aims, but, the absence of authority to impose penalties, monetary or otherwise, upon the member states that violate the articles of the convention.
This research is divided into three main chapters, the collective conclusions of which accumulate to form a clear answer to the main research question. The first chapter provides a clear answer to the question: Why Biological Weapons Convention needs institutional Strengthening? It creates a clear understanding of the issues and challenges facing the institutional strengthening of the BWC, in such a way that “the first step in solving any problem is recognising there is one.
After that, the second chapter provides a contextual and relevant background information about all the previous efforts to strengthen the structure of the Convention since it entered into force in 1975. This method will help creates a pattern to the attempts, the achievements, but also the setbacks and failures the international community has endured.
Finally, the third chapter comes to fix the trends by assessing two categories of strategies; the first strategy is enhancing the structure of BWC through the establishment of additional measures, while the second strategy is Enhancing the effectiveness of existing measures in the BWC. The evaluation of each strategy is addressed according to its feasibility and practicability to enhance the Convention institutionally. This evaluation is based on two aspects: the quality of processes and the quality of structures.
The time of writing this thesis is one of serious challenges to the BWC regime, since it comes one year only from the Ninth Review Conference in 2021, and its significance for the future evolution of the BWC. Many experts and States Parties are looking forward for a good chance of further strengthening the BWC treaty regime.
During the period of conducting this research massive changes have took place, the COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic outbreak has challenged the world’s perceptions of what security is. The outbreak has highlighted that issues like disease also have the power to bring society to a standstill and demonstrated that a microscopic pathogens indiscriminately infecting people can have just as many disruptive effects as wars waged with large armed forces and expensive military hardware, and that it must be dealt with the same way the rest of WMD are treated.